Gouled Hassan Dourad

Gouled Hassan Dourad (1974-) was a Somali leader of al-Qaeda.

Biography
Gouled Hassan Dourad was born in 1974 in Mogadishu, Somalia, but his parents sent him to Germany when the Somali Civil War broke out in 1992. In 1993, he gained refugee status in Sweden, but in 1994 he was turned back from his attempt to head to the United States via Iceland due to having a fradulent passport. While in Sweden, he attended a Somali mosque, and he joined al-Itihaad al-Islamiya in 1997 out of commitment to fight against the Ethiopians invading Somalia. He was trained in Khost, Afghanistan by al-Qaeda before heading to Somalia, and he became the head of the Mogadishu network of AIAI, working under Abu Taha al-Sudan. In 2003, he shot down a landing Ethiopian jetliner at a Somalia airport after kidnapping aid workers at Hargeysa, and he was responsible for xenophobic attacks during the civil war. In 2004, he was arrested and sent to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba on 6 September 2006 by the United States.